i've been lonely for a long time you know especially if you if you work in this business
i'm sure you could attest uh you get to a certain level where it's hard to to make friends anymore
you know there used to be a tough friend you're real friends used to be a time when i was young
and you could just go up to anybody and be like hey you want to make friends want to be friends
yeah you know like when you were young and like four years old i remember like running upstairs
on all fours those times you know like the innocent times and that goes away pretty
quick and i've been in this for a long time so i really started doing that performance work
as sort of a way to to to humanize myself and make friends you know it really started there
i'm human i'm quite fallible i think that is the narrative that's out there and you know i'm just
pushing forward and trying to like do things like this and stay true to like uh things that serve um
and really i'm just trying to like be of benefit maximum benefit maximum service you want an actor
who opens up but you also want somebody that pulls you in and what pulls you in is mystery so
i'm not trying to like unveil the mask or anything like that i think not wearing a mask is is
actually more mysterious like transparency is the new punk rock i think sincerity and transparency
is the new punk rock you got little little x coming he's like you know people got masks and
facades and caricatures that they that they try to put you in a box yeah like we were talking about
so when you're not in the box people know how to deal with you yeah i think my mystery serves
basically we're trying to extend the playground you know it's small simple things that will
change the world right so around here you don't have a lot of existential time in general right
right there's no time for how do i feel what do i think at all so you don't wind up with a lot of
you know creative outlets period you have a lot of meritocracy in the sports and whatnot but you
don't have a lot of like how do i feel what do i think at all i also need friends man i'm lonely
you know so part of me was like yes i wanted to build this thing but it was also me and bobby
fell in love with each other dude became my best friend and then we sort of clicked up on
well what do we want to do after this movie is over right and uh both of us are in love with
this craft and wanted to share the craft with people who don't have it i'm from a different
part of los angeles and bobby bobby's from south central i'm from echo park before it was cute
and we never had opportunities you know like boys and girls club ymca just the first
outlets we ever had right you know we couldn't afford to go to strasbourg stanislavski school
you know there was no college on the agenda i knew at 10 years old i wasn't going to school
that's why i became an actor it was like you need to hustle now because we're broke
and most everybody in my class is from the same kind of upbringing yeah
and we're trying to impart some of the luck and wisdom that we've received over the time
that we've been doing this uh on the people who are involved in our i don't think criticism is bad
like i said like with this theater group you know i show up in like social media dissipates when you
see like 250 people in the room really reaching for something right we we actually get off the
internet get together and connect today and bond yes it was in the room that's what the internet
was built on you know withdraw what drew us all to that that that that social media was this
longing for connection uh and so i'm i'm really with the performance are and this theater space
is we've been trying to like bring that connection off the internet and actualize in front of you
and i have a lot of that in my life a lot of connection which keeps me grounded and and keeps
me feeling loved if you put your hand out right do this put your hand out you're looking at your
hand yeah and then make the background disappear like you can focus enough on that hand to where
everything else sort of disappears it's like this supreme focus and then you can zoom out on the
hand and then i can see you you know you start playing with your focus that way i don't know
if that's like a good analogy what even stevens gave me but it freed me up in front of cameras
took away the fear of being in front of the camera it it made a camera my friend it was like recess
uh it was like a playground it was really like a sand sandbox and we had a great time and i had
really i had a great time nothing but well for those of you it's also i got to meet my father
again you know my dad was in jail got out of jail we weren't spending a lot of time together and
then when he got out of jail we moved into a motel in playa del rey next to the fox hills mall and
we're living there for four years and that's how i got to know my dad wow so it was like rent to dad
which is really what honeyboy is about yeah i mean my dad was a heroin junkie you know i mean
i didn't touch heroin yeah so i'm finding my way but if you had to talk to that kid you know i was
20 23 24 yeah you know i was a scared actor who thought he was the world thought i was it was
sort of like hey he's the transformers kid trying to be a real actor over here
right yeah so i was i was bucking against my insecurity i was desperate to prove myself i'd be
in the face of mads mikkelsen having just watched about hal horizon thinking like i'm not to this
man right and and yeah that's me like trying to find my confidence yeah not even my skill
set just my confidence in the same way that even stevens gave me a confidence in front of the lens
when you get in front of real g's when you start meeting the michael jordan's the people you look
up to gary oldman gary oldman's mads mikkelsen tom hardy you start getting in front of these people
insecurity washes like a wave and unless you have a real confidence in your own craft you can't meet
a god as a human right they'll just eat you you know so you got to find the god in you you know
and i'm and i'm i've worked my way into a confidence level that allows me to see eye
to eye with pretty much everybody at this point except for a couple of the names we mentioned
yeah empathy for my father you know who was always the biggest villain in my life
you know and i think if you can empathize with the biggest villain in your life and sort of scrape
some of these shadows and it makes you lighter i'm freer i don't think i was leading with love and
my life has changed you may or may not attest but i feel like when you when you lead with lightness
and love you can get to the heavy easier you know it's much it's much easier it's much
more accessible like anger and the rough [ __ ] is very easy you know it's the other stuff that feels
quite difficult you know get an honest laugh is very hard arts programs have been cut completely
you still have sports programs and this and that but you don't have arts programs anymore in public
school so if you're a public school kid and you were my age coming up before even stevens we at
least had like drama programs right they were on their way out to at least have them you don't have
them anymore at all yeah everything's just moving into trade school like from a very young age right
like six years old you're gonna be a plumber right period no option for you i don't want to sound
as cheeseball as like i'm trying to give back but i'm actually trying to like this is a very selfish
thing down here yeah i'm not on some altruistic you know save the world type [ __ ] in full
yeah i'm down here trying to create good work and i know that good work comes from life experience
and i know that we have a bunch of full wells in here listen man we're tribal creatures yeah
and if you look like domestic marriages you know it's it's three people four people that's
not the way humans were built to live yeah we were built to have like groups of 60 70.
yeah so that's how we were that's how we've survived since the caveman days and
i don't know what happened since uh you know since the 50s the nuclear family is quite
poisonous right and so i'm i'm yes i'm building a theater group but i'm also building that group
of people that i need in my life it's a family it's not i don't pick roles based on like who's
producing the movie yeah nah no way i was doing studio films for a while and lost my
sensibilities and my connection to the material studio films in general when you have to make
a movie for a big general audience you have to be less specific right and the less specific you are
the less meat you have to chew on right the less meat you have to chew on the less interesting it
is for the actor right so i'm not gonna get on nothing but but yeah i've just found my way to
one survive and to be able to flourish yeah i actually and this is crazy even though i've been
like you know walking through mud i do get to be picky about my stuff and i have a place to go when
i'm not working it's not like i have nothing going on in my life and i need to get the set
you know i'm not broke i'm not i'm not strapped for cash i'm not strapped for creativity i mean
i have like my little domain uh the world had been handed to me on a silver platter i did
not know why i could not sit back and go oh it's because i had done all this work in school or in
it was just sort of handed to me and i had a hard time coming to terms with that uh it's like
being a trust fund baby yeah yeah you're gonna [ __ ] up or would i have a well as full as it is
my well is full yeah yeah and that comes from a certain kind of life i talk about looking up to
sean penn's and the gary oldman yeah it's not just their careers they had to have a certain kind of
life experience to be able to pull some of these roles off so in a way i was reading like these
easy writers raging bull books and looking up to the buckowskis but also trying to desperately earn
my seat right and that's not just through the rolls you got to get arrested a few times yeah
at least this was my thinking my daria post-modern view of acting you know and so i chased a certain
kind of thing not right i'm not saying everything was conscious sure but i wasn't not conscious of
it right yeah and so i would get arrested it'd be the times when my dad would be like apple doesn't
fall far from the tree huh son it wasn't like transformers did that for me right it's not like
i made transformers and my dad's like yeah you and me we're the same we're built the same you
know it wasn't like that sean penn's and the gary olmens they didn't give about my transformers they
cared about my human right and now when i when i get around them there's like a there is this
connection on a certain level that comes from a certain kind of lifestyle i'm not saying that this
is the way it needed to be no just saying this is what it was you know i was totally lost and like
quite apathetic to my whole craft and my life yeah and walked into therapy with a sam shepard
sam shepard plays and sam shepard had just died and
i hadn't talked to my dad in like something like six years and i had like i had no creative friends
really like bottom barrel for me which is what i needed you know i wasn't going to stop doing
what i was doing until that happened to me some people are just really stubborn i'm one of those
you